Kevin O’Leary is best known for his appearances in the reality tv show Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank. Both TV shows offer entertainment where people, or who we can say as entrepreneurs pitch their ideas for a business to a panel of venture capitalists in hope of securing shares and investments for future references to the companies of the said entrepreneurs.
Kevin O’Leary is a Canadian businessman, author, politician and a tv personality having a net worth of $400 million as updated. He is also known for being the founder of the software company SoftKey International which provides products related to computers.
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Personal Details
Stage Name: Kevin O’Leary
Real Name: Terence Thomas Kevin O’Leary
Occupation: Actor, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist
Gender: Male
Birthday: July 9, 1954
Place of Origin: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Age: 46 years old
Height: 6ft (1.83m)
Nationality: Canadian
Total Net Worth: $400 million
Early Life
Terence Thomas Kevin O’Leary, or commonly known as Kevin O’Leary was born on July 9, 1954 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His mother is of a Lebanese descent while his father is of Irish. Due to the reason of having a Lebanese and Irish paternal heritage, Kevin O’Leary also holds an Irish passport and a citizenship.
Due to some personal reasons, his mother and father got divorced. Soon after, his father died, her mother got married to an economist George Kanawaty. George Kanawaty worked with the UN’s International Labour Organization, which became the reason that Kevin grew up moving from places to places such as Cambodia, Tunisia, and even Cyprus. Her mother was a person knowledgeable enough in terms of investing, and for this, she taught Kevin to always keep an eye on how he spent his money, and always save one-third on his money.
Kevin O’Leary first had a dream of being a photographer. Due to his stepfather’s advice instead of pursuing his aspirations, O’Leary attended the university. Attending the university was never a mistake. University was one of the reasons that Kevin grew his admiration for investing and interest in business. He graduated college from the University of Waterloo holding the bachelor’s degree in 1977. In 1980, he got his masters degree from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario.
Business Career
Alongside his studies for his masters, Kevin O’Leary completed an internship at Nabisco. He worked as an assistant brand manager for the company’s brand of cat food. This is the experience Kevin believed as the cause of his development in terms of skills that aided his success today. After his ventures in Nabisco, Kevin O’Leary briefly worked as a television producer, along with two of his former MBA classmates. He eventually let go of the venture and sold his share to one of his partners for $25,000.
1986 when Kevin O’Leary decided to start his software company SoftKey. Having no affordable place to set up the company, he started the company in a basement in Toronto with business partners John Freeman and Gary Babcock. The business was going well until one of their major financial backers withdrew their $250,000 commitment. Having no substitute with the finance, he used his $25,000 share money and a $10,000 investment loan from his mother to finally establish the company. SoftKey is a publisher and distributor of CD-ROM-based computer software suitable for Windows and Macintosh computers.
The company was going well and had developed enough numbers of education software products. By their steady rate of rise, by 1993, the company became one of the major consolidators in the educational software market having development rivalry with other companies, such as WordStar and Spinnaker Software.
Media and Other Ventures
Kevin’s first ever television appearance came in 2006 being one of the five venture capitalists on the CBC show, titled Dragon’s Den. The producers encouraged Kevin to have an on-screen persona of a blunt, and bullying investor. In 2009, due to his great knowledge and perception, Kevin O’Leary was invited to the American version of Dragon’s Den — Shark Tank. He remained on both shows until 2014, when he decided to leave Dragon’s Den. Through his memorable appearances on both shows, he got the nickname “Mr. Wonderful” which is a reference to his reputation of being a mean investor yet giving blunt feedback that greatly helps misguided entrepreneurs.
Other television and media pursuits include being a co-host in Discovery Channel’s Discover Project Earth in 2008. There was also a segment in 2009 by CBC News Network, The Lang and O’Leary Exchange, alongside journalist Amanda Lang.
He also has his own reality show that started in 2012, Redemption Inc., in which the show will try to help ex-convicts start their own business to carry their own feet.
Personal Life
1990 when Kevin O’Leary has been married to his wife Linda O’Leary. They were briefly separated for two years in 2011. Linda serves as the Vice President of Marketing for the company O’Leary Wines. Kevin and Linda were given two wonderful children.
Kevin O’Leary Total Net Worth
SoftKey adopted the name The Learning Company (TLC) in 1995 after they acquired the company for $606 million. In 1999, TLC was bought by Mattel for an outstanding amount of $4.2 billion. When Mattel sales and earnings kept dropping, O’Leary departed from the company. There was a lot of commotion about the health of the company and Mattel executives including O’Leary were sued by Mattel shareholders for the reason that they were misled about the company’s status. All charges were disputed when O’Leary blamed the failure of the acquisition on the technology meltdown and the different cultures of two companies merging.
O’Leary embarked on a new venture in 2003 when he became a co-investor and the director of the company Storage Now. The company’s products are climate controlled storage facilities. After proper management and great development projects, Storage Now has become Canada’s third largest owner/operator of storage services. Storage Now’s facilities can be found in eleven different cities serving major companies such as Marck and Pfizer. The company however, was acquired in March 2007 for an amount of $110 million.
With all these, Kevin O’Leary made a massive $400 million total net worth.